The Leader's Guide to Managing People

7

Team building

Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.

Michael Jordan

Introduction

In our companies and organisations we all have to work in teams in order to get things done. Most things actually get done in teams. Our research at Ashridge shows that 69 per cent of managers work with five or more teams and that 88 per cent are responsible for at least one team’s performance.

Karen Ward, Mary Kennedy and Mike Brent identified five factors of complexity for teams:

• the need for solutions to multi-faceted ambiguous dilemmas
• the need for a multidisciplinary approach in tackling these
• the need for diversity of viewpoints
• the need to work across and outside organisational boundaries
• the need to work in dispersed mode ...